NSICOP: Enemies On Parliament Hill

You want names? You've come to the right place. You want criminal charges? That's exceedingly unlikely. A link-rich primer for what's to come.

Apologies to loyal Real Story subscribers. There was no newsletter from me on Sunday because I’ve been buried in the NSICOP “foreign-interference” conniptions. I’m still on the case this week.

I’m letting other National Post colleagues have the floor on whether the alleged “traitors” should be named, or whether an unredacted copy of the NSICOP report containing the names should be handed to Madam Justice Hogue in her capacity as the foreign inteference commissioner, or whatever.

After a weird 24-hour grace period, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre weighed in: “Canadians have a right to know who and what is the information. Who are they?”

Yes, a dark and ugly cloud of suspicion will hang over Parliament Hill until the public knows these names. For now I’ll just note a couple of things about that: 1. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows who they are. 2. Is there a good reason why his own name is not on the list?

This edition of The Real Story contains the results of Postmedia work and Real Story investigations that should shed some light down the dark alleys that NSICOP’s 84-page report only allows you to peer into without a flashlight. There’s a hell of a lot to digest, so buckle up. This is going to be very link-rich newsletter, with pointers to archive content where you’ll find a great deal of helpful background.

Forgive me if I give the impression that I’m rolling my eyes at certain Press Gallery institutions that have never been remotely interested in the subject of our government’s unseemly foreign liaisons: They are now feigning outrage and asking: By jove, who are the scoundrels pimping themselves out to skeezy foreign actors for quid-pro-quo election advantage?

They’ve been right in front of you, all along. They’ve been at it for years, from Prime Minister Trudeau himself on down. Even now, while everybody’s pulling their hair out and throwing around the treason word in headlines about what some MPs mave have done in the dark, out in the open Ottawa continues to undermine our allies to Beijing’s advantage.

The United States, our most important ally and trading partner, has imposed a 100 percent tariff on Chinese electrical vehicles. Canada’s tariff on Chinese EVs is a paltry six per cent, and Ottawa will even give you money to buy one.

What you should know by now

Here’s my piece from the front page of the National Post: It isn't 'foreign interference' if the culprits are willing MPs. It’s about the thing everybody is shouting about at the moment: the latest report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP).

I ask you: Did we really need NSICOP to tell us what we already knew? Back in April I put it this way: An intervention is not “interference” if it’s solicited and gratefully accepted, and the most obtuse journalistic circumlocutions will be required to employ the word “interference” to describe welcome, agreeable collusions to the benefit of the Liberal Party’s electoral fortunes.

In this exasperating way, when you strip everything down, the NSICOP hubbub that’s roiling its way through the news cycle is a kind of replay of the Hogue Inquiry uproars that preceded it, in that they each warrant the same headline: They knew. They said nothing. They did nothing.

Background: Shooting the messengers: Did Team Trudeau commit perjury at the Hogue Inquiry hearings?

Also: Beijing’s Interference Ops: Vindications.

What you aren’t allowed to know

The first thing you need to understand: The NSICOP report released last Monday isn’t quite what it says on the tin.

The Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada’s Democratic Processes and Institutions is an elaborately-redacted version of a report submitted to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on March 22, classifed as “Top Secret-Special Intelligence - Cabinet Confidence - Solicitor Client Privilege -Canadian Eyes Only.”

NSICOP’s cover material notes that it contained “fully or partly redacted references” to source material in order to avoid injury to Canada’s national security, national defence or international relations.

What this means in the real world, according to the NSICOP report itself, is that its contents were redacted to remove information that “the Prime Minister believed would be injurious to national security, national defence or international relations, or which constitutes solicitor-client privilege.”

Remember: NSICOP is not a Parliamentary committee, strictly speaking. It is not established by the House of Commons. NSICOP answers to the prime minister. The committee submits classified reports to the PMO which are later tabled in Parliament, usually with massive redactions.

Last Monday’s report contains only what the Prime Minister’s Office allowed the report to contain. That’s what explains ridiculously opaque passages like this:

[*** Twelve paragraphs were deleted to remove injurious or privileged information. The case study described the activities of a PRC proxy. It noted CSIS’s assessment that the proxy represented a threat to Canada in every sense of the CSIS Act’s s. 2 definition of foreign influence in that their actions over time have been detrimental to the interest of Canada and are clandestine, deceptive and threatening.

I’ll be getting around to my own unredacted account of what that’s all about. In the meantime:

What even NSICOP isn’t allowed to know

Separately, last Wednesday, NSICOP tabled its annual report for 2023 with the House of Commons. The big story there: Ottawa continues to rely on the excuse of “cabinet confidences” to withhold information from NSICOP, without which the committee says it can’t do its work properly.

Over the course of 2023: “Federal departments and agencies withheld or refused the disclosure of over a thousand documents, in whole or in part, on the basis that they were Cabinet confidences,” according to the Wednesday report. “Specifically, close to a quarter of these documents were withheld in their entirety.”

So there you go. Another reason why Canadian politics is descending into a maelstrom of paranoia and suspicion and public distrust. The Opposition is calling this stonewalling shocking, abusive and unacceptable.

So what’s new?

There is what you could call “new” information in last Monday’s NSICOP report, which I touched on in my Post piece.

The extent of what the prime minister knew about the corruption involved in Han Dong’s candidacy in Don Valley North, and the fact that he knew what CSIS knew for five long years and said nothing and did nothing and deliberately misled the public about it, is a big deal. The NSICOP report fleshes it out a bit. It’s a really, really big deal.

Readers will recall that Dong stepped away from the Liberal Party in March last year following evidence that he was a central figure in a massive Chinese interference operation that targeted at least 11 candidates and 13 campaign staffers, “some of whom appeared to be wittingly working for the PRC,” the NSICOP report states.

This is just a strange recapitulation of what Sam Cooper reported back in November, 2022, the shocker that kicked everything off.

Although heavily redacted, as is so much of NSICOP’s report, the Han Dong “case study” contains sharper and far more damning detail than has emerged from earlier news reports and it also calls into question Trudeau’s sworn testimony during the Hogue inquiry hearings in April.

There is a lot the PMO would be reluctant to have disclosed in last Monday’s report, but there’s also stuff the PMO would be pleased to let through. That’s why you end up with headlines like this: China, India allegedly interfered in Conservative leadership races: report. Conservative Party says 'this is the first time we have heard about' possible interference in leadership race.

I don’t mean to downplay NSICOP’s mentions of India’s unscrupulous friends in Canada, but it’s all penny ante compared to China’s operations in and around Parliament Hill, as NSICOP makes clear.

Wait, what? The Conservative Party is compromised too?

The NSICOP report alludes to an Indian effort to interfere in one Conservative leadership race, and also refers to “two specific instances where [People's Republic of China] officials allegedly interfered in the leadership races of the Conservative Party of Canada."

The CBC quotes Conservative Party spokesperson Sara Fischer: "CSIS did not advise the Conservative Party of Canada of any intelligence suggesting there was foreign interference in the leadership contest." That I can definitely believe. But then: "This is the first time we have heard about it."

It most certainly is not the first time Conservative Party headquarters has heard about “possible interference” by Beijing’s proxies in its own leadership rumbles, because I’ve talked to senior Conservatives about it, and they’ve talked to me. See especially: Beijing’s Best Canadian Friends, Part Etcetera.

Somebody at party headquarters needs to take up a paid subscription to The Real Story, or at the very least notice what I’ve written for the National Post or the Ottawa Citizen. For instance, a National Post piece: Beijing simply could not abide Erin O’Toole’s ‘tough on China’ policies. And yet here’s Conservative HQ throwing O’Toole under the bus, on this very subject, only two months ago.

If you’re a Conservative and you haven’t been paying attention, don’t be too hard on yourself but you’ll want a stiff drink before you get into this Real Story deep dive: Conservatives, the Media and CCP Psy-Ops.

And pour yourself another glass for this one: The Comprador in the Conservative leadership race keeps digging. That’s about leadership hopeful Jean Charest. Embarassing fact: If Charest had beaten Pierre Poilievre and the original Conservative proposition for a foreign agents’ registry was made law, Charest would have had to register his own name on it.

Here’s a Post piece by Tom Blackwell that’s also directly relevant: Conservative leadership contender Patrick Brown wins support of Beijing-allied groups, senator.

Hold on. The news media is mobbed up as well?

As anyone paying attention to Beijing’s presence in Canada will know by now, most of the Chinese-language print, digital and social media in this country is controlled directly and indirectly by Beijing.

The social media application WeChat is widely used by Chinese immigrants as a news aggregator, like X/Twitter, and CSIS has assessed that WeChat is intensely manipulated by the Chinese government. As our friend the sleuth Sam Cooper has disclosed, Beijing “weaponized” WeChat against the Conservatives in the 2021 federal election.

WeChat was probably the primary media weapon Beijing and its proxies deployed to defeat Steveston -Richmond East Conservative Kenny Chiu that year, for instance. But it’s an across-the-board affair.

“Most of these media outlets were linked to the PRC via partnership agreements with the China News Service, the Chinese Communist Party’s primary media entity servicing Chinese ethnocultural communities, which reports directly to the United Front Work Department, the Chinese Communist Party’s central coordinating body for foreign interference activities,” the report states.

But does the weaponization of the media extend to “legacy” institutions? Here’s some juicy stuff NSICOP calls “grey zone” subterfuge that the PMO was obviously happy to endorse by nihil obstat, if you like fancy ecclesiastical terminology:

“For example, it is not illegal for a foreign state to coordinate with a private or non-state entity to pressure policymakers. This activity becomes interference when the foreign state seeks to hide its involvement, direction or funding. Similarly, it is not illegal to pay Canadian media to produce coverage that portrays a foreign state in a positive light or to amplify the official policy of a foreign state. . .

“During the period under review, the intelligence community observed states manipulating traditional media to disseminate propaganda in what otherwise appeared to be independent news publications. . . According to the intelligence community, the PRC was the most capable actor in this context, interfering with Canadian media content via direct engagement with Canadian media executives and journalists.

[*** Six sentences were deleted to remove injurious or privileged information. The sentences described examples of the PRC paying to publish media articles without attribution, sponsoring media travel to the PRC, pressuring journalists to withdraw articles and creating false accounts on social media to spread disinformation.”

See this Real Story investigation for some details.

Paranoid enough yet? You just wait.

A quick note about the United Front

You’ll never get your head around Beijing’s overseas exertions unless you understand how the United Front Work Department operates around the world. Especially hyperactive in Canada, the UFWD is Beijing’s overseas influence-peddling, election-interference, strongarming and “elite capture” infrastructure. To its credit, the NSICOP report includes a CSIS briefing about the UFWD.

It should tell you something that in the outrageous whitewash filed by Trudeau’s family friend, “Special Rapporteur” David Johnston - himself a lifelong poster boy for Beijing’s elite-capture operations in Canada - the United Front shows up only once, in passing.

In the nine years since the Trudeau government came to power, the United Front has swallowed up dozens of Chinese “hometown” associations across the country and has set up or otherwise taken over perhaps hundreds of ethnic Chinese fraternal and community associations.

The superagency runs the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office out of China’s Ottawa embassy and China’s consulates across the country. It would not be a stretch to say that in several federal ridings, the UFWD activist base and the Liberal Party’s activist and candidate-selection base is indistinguishable.

A whole lot of necessary backstory:

Compradors and Eminent Canadian Gentlemen

Real Story series: Diplomat, Socialite, Spy.

China’s “Magic Weapon” Hits Canadian Targets.

The Michael Chong Uproar: What’s Changed?

And here’s where we go dark. . .